Keyholes
by Iellix
Summary: A series of ten drabbles - keyhole peeks into the team's relationships with each other, their work, and themselves. Various characters, pairings, and genres.
1. She's Got a Way

**Billy Joel, 'She's Got a Way'****  
Connor/Abby  
Fluff**

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Abby is beautiful and smart, witty, funny. She's easy to talk to. Their shared sorrow is half sorrow, their shared joy is double joy. She yells at him when he needs to be yelled at and always seems to know exactly what to do to make him smile, even when he doesn't want to. She has a sparkle in her too-blue eyes and a glint in her broad smile that that makes him love her all the more every time he sees it.

She's just got a way about her.

And Connor loves it—and _her._


	2. Wild Gypsy Girl

**The Jolly Rogers, 'Wild Gypsy Girl'  
Nick/Claudia  
Angst, Romance**

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In his brain, Nick Cutter knows his search for Claudia Brown is pointless. He's the only person on earth who knows who she is—_was—_and he did something in the distant past that skewed the evolutionary timeline and undid her very existence. She's gone, replaced by a near-perfect physical copy with a completely different personality in Jenny Lewis.

But in his heart of hearts, he still hopes. _Hope,_ that most irritating of demons from Pandora's urn, burns within him and won't let him give up, even though giving up would be easier. He makes faithful pilgrimages to the Forest of Dean when he can, anomaly detector in hand, to search and hope and wish and to promise the god he doesn't believe in anything he wants if he'll just give him another chance to find her.


	3. Kick in the Head

**Dean Martin, 'Kick in the Head'  
Connor/Abby  
Romance**

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"Connor—shut up."

And then she's kissing him—actually kissing him!—and it's wonderful. Time slows down, the world around them disappears. There's just him, and Abby, and her lips on his. It's the culmination of years of pining and hoping and sighing wistfully after her. As much as he wishes and hopes, he's figured he has her pegged and knows, realistically, she won't give him a chance.

At least, that's what he thought until just a few seconds ago.

Now she's gone and scrambled his assessment with that one kiss and he has to start his evaluation all over again.

Well ain't that a kick in the head?


	4. Ronds

**The Rogues, 'Ronds'  
Gen**

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They've done it literally dozens upon dozens of times—stepping through the shifting white lights of anomalies into worlds that time has forgotten and human beings were never meant to see. By now it's fairly routine. Some kid wandered through to the Triassic? Okay, whatever. Pterosaur in protected airspace? No biggie. Prehistoric creatures mistakenly adopted by some well-meaning animal-lover? Same ol', same ol'.

But as they step through the lights and open their eyes to the Land Before Time, their breath catches and they take it in with awe.


	5. Tangled Up in Me

**Skye Sweetnam, 'Tangled up in Me'  
Abby  
Angst**

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Abby's past relationships might charitably be called 'strained'; realistically, they were variously dysfunctional. She always seems to go for—or attract—the biggest alpha-jackasses. Her last boyfriend found himself dumped, and in hospital, when he tried to smack her around. A dozen stitches later he was her ex and she got a job with the Wellington Zoo and moved out.

So she's started putting up walls around herself, protects herself because she can't trust herself to make the right choices. It's become a habit, become twisted. The more she wants someone—the more they make her heart flutter and her brain turn to soup, the more she _wants them—_the more she pushes them away.

She knows Connor would never hurt her, emotionally or physically, because he's not that type and she can tell. She'd be lying to herself if she said she felt nothing for him but she doesn't know what to do about it. Experience as made her wary.

So she pushes him away and hopes that he might someday realize what that means.


	6. Drunken Lullabies

**Flogging Molly, 'Drunken Lullabies'  
Connor/Abby  
Humour, gen**

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His first clue is the two empty bottles of cider on the kitchen counter. His second is the trail of clothes in the hall. The last is light on in the bathroom.

Abby only gets _this_ drunk—stupid drunk, droolingly drunk, drinking-while-standing-naked-in-the-shower-in-case-she-vomits drunk—under just a few circumstances. And since he knows it's not a pregnancy scare this time and they haven't lost any team members, Connor knows what's probably happened.

"Long phone call with your mum, Abbs?"

"No shit."


	7. Rock and Roll Heart

**Eric Clapton, 'Rock'n'Roll Heart'  
Connor and Abby  
Humour**

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Now she knows why the animals always look so _relieved_ when she comes back to the flat. Her yoga class is cancelled so she sighs and comes back, only to find Connor with his iPod hooked up to the speakers in the kitchen, dancing and lip-syncing into an egg whisk in what's clearly a well-practiced performance.

He rounds off his routine by sliding across the banister at the top of the stairs, and it's then that he sees Abby there. He stops dead and drops the whisk and turns a startling shade of bright pink. He does the goldfish thing, his mouth opening and closing but not making any sound.

"So—is this what you do whenever I'm not here?"

He nods dumbly and watches her go to her room to change.

"Oh, Connor?"

"Yeah, Abbs?"

"Nice moves."


	8. Time of Your Life

**Green Day, 'Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)'  
Gen, angst**

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Perhaps the most poignant recitation of all time is also the simplest: 'Nothing lasts forever.' That's true. Nothing _does_ last forever.

Eventually the Anomaly Project comes to an end. With no Helen Cutter around to fuck around with them deliberately anymore and all the technology in place needed to predict and close the anomalies that turn up naturally, there's nothing left for them to do.

It isn't bittersweet—it's just plain sad. As wonderful as it is that they're safe from anomalies and creatures, the Arc represents a huge chunk of their lives and the closest relationships. To see it end is the end of an era. Without the Arc connecting them, there's nothing left to hold Sarah and Becker, Danny Quinn, Connor and Abby, and even _Lester_ together.

It's been the time of their lives.

But the doors close for the last time and then it's all over.


	9. Til the Real Thing Comes Along

**Dean Martin (again!), ''Til the Real Thing Comes Along'  
Nick/Jenny, implied Nick/Claudia  
Angst, romance**

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She looks like Claudia, sounds like her, _feels_ like her—the scientist in Cutter knows it's _not_ her, but the _man_ in Cutter doesn't really care.

He's totally under Jenny Lewis's power. He's completely in love with what she represents. She says she sees him in a new light and that he's grown on her, but he isn't sure he believes that. They're settling, both of them; she isn't Claudia for him and he's not what Jenny is looking for, but in their desperation for _something_ they're perhaps perfect for one another.

It isn't love. It can't be. But for now, it'll do.


	10. A History of Everything

**Barenaked Ladies, 'A History of Everything'  
Nick, mentions of Claudia  
Angst**

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Nick Cutter has always rolled his eyes at religious people who insist that evolution makes humanity worthless. He's never understood that mindset. It comes from ignorance, he imagines. And fear. He knows how evolution works, knows how biology works, and knows what it means. Where some see it as a personal affront, the implication that they aren't the meat-puppets of some divine megalomaniac, Cutter sees beauty in it. Beauty in the chaos.

He stares at his picture of Claudia, the only shred of evidence he has left that assures him he isn't as mad as everyone thinks he is. Knowing that everything is so delicate, that life as they know it came so close to being so very different—or not existing at all—only makes him see how precious it really is.


End file.
